In the area of high speed printing, prior apparatus and machines have included the provision for printing on a plurality of media at the several stations across a business machine. In one type of construction, there may be provided a single print head or like mechanism which travels across several printing stations or positions and with record media directed past each of such stations to accomplish printing on the desired media. In another type of construction, there may again be provided record media at several stations across the machine but with a plurality of print heads, each associated with its station for printing the desired information on the media. In a business machine, a normal or common type of construction may include a receipt station, a journal station, and/or a form or slip station wherein a receipt is printed and provided to the customer, a journal or audit is printed and retained in the machine, and a form or slip is utilized and which may be in the manner of a pass book or a document and have certain information printed thereon and then returned to the customer or deposited in a receptacle for further processing.
With the advent of more compact construction in business machines, it is desirable that the several functions or modes of such machines be contained within space and travel limitations for precise and high speed operation. Representative of a plurality of stations for accomplishing the printing on several media, as described hereinabove, is the data terminal shown and described in Cederberg Patent No. 3,825,681 which discloses dual print heads for operation at the receipt, audit, and form stations. Additionally, selective feeding of two superposed record media independently to a single printing station is disclosed in British Pat. No. 1,255,681.